Dull, unimaginative and missing far to many good opportunities

Rating: 4/10 (10 August 2005)

OK, this one contains spoilers, but if you've seen the trailer, you know the whole movie already anyway.
Much has been said about Michael Bay's talent (and especially the absence of it), and basically "The Island" adds nothing substantially new to this discussion. If you really want to see another action flick of the nice-production-values but braindead-screenplay kind of type, or if you're 13 and have never seen any decent sci-fi film, then go ahead and watch this movie.
Otherwise be warned:
1) The movie makes no attempt to actually show us how the society inside the facility works, nor why it has been designed in such a way. You'll only get very short glimpses of everyday's life, which mostly serve to provide some cool scenes and not to bring us to a deeper understanding. "Logan's Run", a movie which certainly has its flaws, did a much better job here by just showing us examples of everyday's life and different locations. In Michael Bay's film however, the society merely exists to get the action started and is nowhere near being believable.
2) For what seemed to me like an eternity, there are action scenes, we have seen a thousand times in exactly this way. Maybe some people can't get enough of them, but seeing choreography taken from "action films 101" just bores me. Don't get me wrong, I really like action scenes if done properly like in "Wo hu cang long", "The Matrix Reloaded" or hell maybe even "Resident Evil" (bad special effects aside). But having to look at yet another car chase with yet another car explosion and yet another (or two anothers to be precise) hanging on a rope above some abyss sequence is not what I'm willing to pay any money for.
3) The screenplay is flawed, really flawed and this destroys what's left of the illusion of disbelief. Super trained seals just forget to take the gun from somebody they arrest, in the unavoidable who's-the-clone-and-who's-the-original scene they not only shoot the wrong guy needlessly (they could've just distinguished them by asking a simple question like "what kind of drink do you get from a cow?" because the clones are really clueless about the real world), no, nobody even bothers to check if the killed person has a signature on his wrist like every clone does. Oh, and you constantly wonder why characters won't use the technology they obviously have and why such a futuristic high-tech facility is designed so poorly, that people can walk around in areas they're not supposed to be without being noticed, while wearing wristlets that makes them locatable anytime and while even small delicts like coming to close to your friend are detectable. I could go on for hours...
4) It's cheesy. Cheesy like "professional killer suddenly finds his conscience and turns against his employer just 10 minutes before the movie ends".
5) As you probably know the movie is rated PG-13. I've yet to see a good PG-13 rated action film, but they could've at least tried to make it tough and sexy in a PG-13 compatible way. Unfortunately they didn't, so this is far too tame and (despite Scarlett Johansson) absolutely not sexy.
6) The camera is moving and shaking in over 99% of all shots. Using this technique in action scenes wisely may indeed help to create suspense, but shouldn't be the only means. Using it in nearly every action and non-action shot however, is inducing headaches and makes oneself wonder if the camera operators were on drugs.
7) It hurts to see so many great opportunities wasted. This story done right could really make a great movie, asking questions about the value of cloned life versus non-cloned life, showing us how the lead characters adapt to an alien society (in this film they just do out of thin air) or elaborating on how physically adult persons, who have never even heard of love and sex find out about it. Furthermore this movie is far to linear (there were opportunities for some fine plot twists which Michael Bay obviously just ignored) and it's not even a good action film. The society outside the facility is as boring as it can get in science-fiction (it's basically just like today with a few technical gadgets thrown in), and most of the action scenes could've just been taken from S.W.A.T. or some James Bond movie.
Overall you could say that his movie is just dull, so it is pretty much in line with Michael Bay's former work. Unfortunately.